The Washington Post attempts to psychoanalyze long-shot
presidential candidates. Make no mistake — it will be a minor
miracle if either Democrat Dennis Kucinich or Republican Duncan
Hunter do well in a few primaries, much less win the presidential
nomination of their respective parties. But do we really need
Princeton scholars to explain their candidacies to us?
And I guess it’s technically true that neither Jesse Jackson in
1988 nor Pat Buchanan in 1996 came that close to winning
on the final delegate count. But they did both come in second in
multi-candidate races, which is better than most analysts had
predicted.